West Coast Shelled!

On that day in history, the Japanese submarine I-17surfaced off the West Coast of the United States and fired a brace of shells at the Elwood Oil Refinery complex in southern California. The attack came after dusk on February 23rd, just as the nation was settling into their couches to listen to a fireside chat by FDR. Despite claims otherwise, this was the first foreign attack on the continental United States since the war of 1812.*

The shelling had no appreciable military effect, with none of the shells getting terribly near the refinery itself but instead blowing holes in nearby farm land. What it did provoke, however, was an intensive hunt for the submarine by American forces and a continuing wave of scares on the West Coast over the next few years, including one three days later, when reports of Japanese aircraft over Los Angeles sparked several barrages of anti-aircraft fire and a five hour blackout during which two Angelenos were killed in traffic accidents.

This was not the only Japanese submarine to attack the west coast. In a particularly impressive effort in September 1942, the Japanese submarine I-25 launched a floatplane which flew inland and dropped two bombs on a section of deserted forest in southwestern Oregon.

But what these attacks reveal in retrospect was the ineptitude of the Japanese submarine effort. The Imperial Japanese Navy started the war with a fair number of ocean-going submarines with the range to reach the West Coast. In a similar situation in the Atlantic, the Germany Navy moved substantial submarine assets off the American coast and inflicted massive casualties on U.S. shipping during 1942-43. The “second happy time” was what the German U-boat commanders called that period (the first “happy time” had been off Britain in 1940). By contrast, the Japanese submarines managed a few inconsequential attacks on coastal installations and almost nothing against American shipping. For the entire war, the Germans sank 14.9 million tons of Allied shipping while the Japanese managed a paltry 907,000 tons. This was a terrible result, given the utter dependence of the Allied effort in the Pacific on shipping of all sorts.

Why? In essence, the Japanese aimed their submarines at the Allied fleet rather than at Allied shipping. The submarines were supposed to kill warships not freighters, as part of a overall war plan that would whittle down American forces as they crossed the Pacific. Sometimes that worked, as in what was possibly the single most successful torpedo shot of World War II, the I-19’s spread of six on September 15, 1942, which sank the aircraft carrier Wasp, the destroyer O’Brien, and wounded the battleship North Carolina. But mostly it ended in failure. Warships were hard targets, faster than submarines, more alert to their surroundings than merchant ships, and able to strike back in a number of ways.

The result was the frittering away of the Japanese submarine force in largely ineffective attacks and the uninterrupted ability of the United States to supply her forces in the Pacific. There was no “Battle of the Pacific,” as there had been a “Battle of the Atlantic,” to the great detriment of Japan’s war effort. The United States did not make the same mistake, and the greater number of its submarines were sent against the Japanese merchant marine, with catastrophic results for the Japanese war economy. The shelling of the west coast, while inciting panic on land, was ultimately a dead end for the IJN’s submarine force.

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48 comments

Actually, my earlier comment would also be wrong. Gen. Pancho Villa attacked Columbus, New Mexico on March 9, 1916.

The Visit-Astoria.com site is also wrong in a different way : the first (international) military strike on North America after the War of 1812 was the Fenian raid on Campobello Island, New Brunswick, in April of 1866.

To assess Japanese submarine strategy, you really need to compare the tonnes-miles-day figures for the West Coast versus East Coast. Since the Japanese sorties are longer, returns per sortie will be lower to start with. If there were lest coastall shipping, than ROI falls even lower. The smart money shifts to German submarines, and the best use of Japanese resources in the tonnage war is to maximise the Allied Pacific commitment.
Since there’s not much further to gain by attacking, Japan wants to encourage the _Allies_ to attack by giving up ground, thereby drawing in tonnage and escorts.
So where’s my consultant’s fee?

it did provoke, however, was an intensive hunt for the submarine by American forces and a continuing wave of scares on the West Coast over the next few years,

including the epic 19 May 1942 Battle Of Cape Lookout off the Oregon Coast, in which the delusional commander of US subchaser PC-815, one L. Ron Hubbard, emptied his vessel of depth charges in a brilliant assault on a magnetic rock formation, was resupplied and dropped all of those depth charges as well, and gloriously defeated a floating log with surface fire.

Yeah, I’d tend to agree. The Japanese value system led them to downgrade certain things (like recovering downed pilots, for example).

To assess Japanese submarine strategy

Eric, if you can come up with an assessment that makes 907,000 tons vs 14 million look good for the Japanese, more power to you.

So where’s my consultant’s fee?

I’ll give you a cut of my blogging fee.

ncluding the epic 19 May 1942 Battle Of Cape Lookout off the Oregon Coast, in which the delusional commander of US subchaser PC-815, one L. Ron Hubbard, emptied his vessel of depth charges in a brilliant assault on a magnetic rock formation, was resupplied and dropped all of those depth charges as well, and gloriously defeated a floating log with surface fire.

Oh. Wow. That’s…Wow.

(these kind of things were not uncommon in war, but that it was L. Ron Hubbard!?!)

Even at that early date, Hubbard lived mostly in the vainglorious world inside his own head, a world that contacted reality only at a few points — a trait that only strengthened in later life (see, for example, The Gorilla Goals)

It’s entertaining follow the [next] link at the bottom of the Cape Lookout account: within a year, Hubbard had been relieved of command for fecklessly anchoring and conducting unordered gunnery practice within Mexican territorial waters, neither of which he was authorized to do.

Padfield points out that building new escorts was well down the priority list for IJN behind new fleet units… whether this was cause or consequence of the decision not to go for a convoy system is tricky.

The IJN had roughly 50 operational submarines when the war began, of which a half-dozen or more were shorter-range RO-types, as opposed to the longer-ranged I-types; the Germans had several hundred Type IX and VII submarines in the winter of 1941-42 with the range to operate off North America (in both Canadian and US waters).

During the war, the Germans built roughly 700 Type VIIs and almost 300 Type IXs; the Japanese built roughly 100 similarly-sized boats, both I-types and RO-types.

Considering the overall sinkings-per-sub ratio between the IJN and KM (and the much greater amount of Allied shipping in the Atlantic, and the obvious concentrations), the IJN’s successes may very well have been roughly equivalent to the Germans, sub-for-sub, for whatever that was worth…

The IJN mounted what was – for them – a fairly significant campaign against merchant shipping off the east coast of Australia in 1942 and it still really didn’t pay much in the way of dividends for them, considering the results of the 1942-43 campaigns in the South and Southwest Pacific in the same period.

In many ways, the Pacific was too large and the IJN’s resources too small to mount anything approximating the “German” (or “American”) type of campaign.

As far as it goes, I’d suggest there was, in fact, a “Battle of the Pacific” in terms of a contest between the Allies’ ability to maintain sea control and the IJN’s ability to contest it (and vice-versa); the difference is that the Allies won the defensive battle in the Pacific in 1941-1942, and the offensive side in 1943-44.

The Germans lost the “defensive” side of the Battle of the Atlantic in 1939, of course; they lost the “offensive” side in the eastern Atlantic in 1941, and in the western Atlantic in 1942.

We seem to have different numbers. I have the IJN having 63 submarines/48 I-Class (large) in 1941. That compares well to the Germans at the start of their war in 1939, when they had 56 submarines, 24 of which were Atlantic capable.

Despite those numbers, the Germans managed to sink over a million tons of British shipping from September 1939-September 1940, more than the Japanese managed during the entire war.

As to the number of submarines built: Well, yes. The Germans committed to a submarine war and the Japanese didn’t.

The Pacific is surely large, but the choke points around the West Coast, Hawaii, Australia, up the island chains, and in the Indian Ocean were brimming with merchant ships. The Americans managed to go after Japanese merchant ships quite effectively, despite the same size ocean.

No, the Japanese bungled the submarine war badly. They had the historical precedent (WWI) and the current example (the Atlantic, 39-41), and they largely ignored them. A concerted effort against the American west coast and lines to Hawaii and Australia in 42-43 would have crimped allied efforts in the Pacific substantially.

Tokyo-Honolulu is about the same distance as “Europe”-New York, so it’s not like the Japanese subs would have had to go an impossibly long distance to find US shipping. And sub-for-sub comparisons are all well and good, but the number of submarines available is not an arbitrary fact but a choice made by the navy in question. The Germans went submarine-heavy, the Japanese went capital-ship-heavy, but both sides ended up losing.

The defeat of the Japanese feels very overdetermined. A bunch of naval warfare happens in the Pacific, the Manhattan Project reaches its goal, and the US keeps building nuclear bombs and longer-range aircraft until they can drop enough of them on Japan to force it to surrender.

In our timeline this happened in August 1945 after two bombs; if the Japanese figured out submarine warfare you could imagine it might have happened in 1947 after twenty bombs.

so the IJN had all of 57 operational boats in 12/41, of which only 40 or so were actually capable of operating in the eastern Pacific from the bases the Japanese had available when the war began…

In contrast to the Japanese, in 1939-40 the Germans had the whoile of the North Sea to cross before they could get at the British sea lanes in the Western Approaches; even a small Type II could be useful; once they had control of the French Biscay ports in 1940, they had easy access to both the North Atlantic convoys routes and the UK-Gibraltar-West Africa routes…and when the Murmansk convoys began in 1941, the Germans had been in control of Norway for a year…

Given that the Japanese were not in a position to occupy naval bases with land lines of communication to their industrial areas anywhere east of Honshu or south of Kyushu, there really wasn’t much of chance they could pull off anything similar.

The Germans went “submarine heavy” in the 1930s and 1940s because in 1917, they thougyht they had come within a few months of sucessfully blockading the UK, and given the geography of the eastern Atlantic, the economic strength of the UK, and the capability of the RN, a surface-heavy KM would have done as poorly as the Imperial German Navy had done in 1914-18. Of course, once they decided to go to war simultaneously against the UK, US, and USSR, it didn’t make any difference what sort of navy they had…they were doomed.

The IJN went “surface heavy” in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s because they planned to use sea control to expand their maritime empire (as they had, essentially, in 1897, 1904-05, and 1914.)

Once they decided to go to war with the US and UK simultaneously, an expanded IJN submarine force would have no more real impact on the course of the war then the 6th Fleet did historically.

So the numbers of IJN subs at the start were roughly the same as the Germans at the start of WWII.

And the Germans had to get through the bottleneck of the Baltic and the North Sea and push wide out around the Orkneys, a substantial extra distance. It was a lengthy voyage, at risk of British air and sea surveillance nearly the entire way, unlike the Japanese subs setting out from the homeland.

As to Biscay, it surely did help, just as the Japanese conquests in 1942 could have served as forward submarine bases in a concerted submarine offensive.

As to the example of 1917, there’s no reason why the Japanese could not read the history books themselves. In fact, a Japanese destroyer squadron and served as convoy escorts in the Med towards the end of WWI, so the Japanese had the experience of protecting convoys, experience that could have been useful.

an expanded IJN submarine force would have no more real impact on the course of the war then the 6th Fleet did historically.

There’s no way we can know this. What we can know is that in a theater where seaborne transport was even more important than in the European theater, the Japanese made little effort at submarine warfare and the United States was essentially able to supply a far-flung war effort without much interference. At the same time, a submarine effort by the U.S. in the *same* theater essentially destroyed the economic basis of the Japanese war effort.

No “bottleneck of the Baltic” for Germany in 1939; Denmark and Sweden were both neutral, and the Germans, of course, had a number of naval bases and ports on the North Sea.

Actually, if you look at the mileage between Germany’s North Sea coast and the Western Approaches, it is about 1800 miles; that is using the route Hamburg-Bergen-Orkney/Shetlands Gap-SSW into the Atlantic to a point roughly due west of Galway, and then SSE to a point off of Land’s End.

Tokyo to San Francisco (great circle) is roughly 5100 miles; Tokyo to Honolulu is roughly 3850; so that’s a pretty significant difference in terms of transit time, time on station, etc., between the KM attacking merchant ships in the eastern Atlantic in 1939-40 and the IJN doing the same in the eastern Pacific in 1941-42. Much less the amount of sea room for the merchantmen to be “found” in and the much greater amount of shipping in the Western Approaches.

Consider the fact that – generally – it takes 2-3 ships in overhaul, training, and transit to sustain one operationally at oceanic distances, and the number of boats that could maintained on station across the Pacific for the IJN would be 10; initial “surge” numbers from peacetime (presuming intelligent planning) would be about twice that; interestingly enough, according to Rohwer, they sent more than 20 to Hawaiian waters in suppport of the Oahu Raid; of those, about 10 c ontinued on to the eatsern Pacific in early 1942, including the I-17.

So they mounted a maximum effort with what they forces were available and their results were not that significant…

As far as the difference between the IJN and USN submarine efforts in 1941-45, the question is could the IJN have built up their submarine force beyond what they did historically? The Japanese could never compete with the Americans in terms of production and manpower, of course, so some of what they did build and man would have to be dropped in return for more submarines…

And not to be a challenge, but I think you have to re-consider this statement:

“…As to Biscay, it surely did help, just as the Japanese conquests in 1942 could have served as forward submarine bases in a concerted submarine offensive.”

Considering that Brest, St. Nazaire, La Rochelle, Bordeaux, etc., were all industrialized and developed ports, complete with breakwaters, docks, dry docks, piers, wharves, warehouses, defenses, etc., and with technically adept and literate local labor forces that could be compelled to work for the occupiers, and with multiple connections via road, railroad, and river-canal systems to the German industrial centers…

The atolls and high islands of Micronesia amounted to anchorages and roadsteads, at best…other than Singapore and Java, I don’t think the IJN had access to a drydock south of the Home Islands…

No “bottleneck of the Baltic” for Germany in 1939; Denmark and Sweden were both neutral, and the Germans, of course, had a number of naval bases and ports on the North Sea.

There was surely a Baltic bottleneck. German submarines were largely based at ports in the Baltic and they had to exit out of its predefined and narrow mouth which made them easier targets for the British. In addition, in the winter of 1939-40, the Baltic froze over in many places, trapping a number of U-Boats in the ice.

so that’s a pretty significant difference in terms of transit time, time on station, etc., between the KM attacking merchant ships in the eastern Atlantic in 1939-40 and the IJN doing the same in the eastern Pacific in 1941-42.

Sure. It’s lucky that the large Japanese submarines were among the longest-legged in the world. And those 1800 miles the Germans were sailing were under constant risk of British air and sea encounters, while the Japanese submarines were unlikely to encounter either. Further, the distance from Brest to the east coast of the United States rivaled that of Tokyo-Honolulu and yet Doenitz was able to mount an effective U-Boat campaign off the U.S. And the US managed to put submarines into the Yellow Sea, covering the same distances in reverse, and cut up the Japanese merchant fleet.

So they mounted a maximum effort with what they forces were available and their results were not that significant…

They mounted an effort against military targets, not mercantile ones. Small wonder that the result was bad.

The atolls and high islands of Micronesia amounted to anchorages and roadsteads, at best…other than Singapore and Java, I don’t think the IJN had access to a drydock south of the Home Islands…

And yet strangely they managed to homeport the Combined Fleet in Indonesia in the later years of the war, to be close to the oil supply, which was being cut off in the Home Islands by–surprise–the American submarine campaign. And the United States managed to establish forward submarine bases as they advanced up the island chains towards Japan.

(which credits Jurgen Rohwer, among others), of 9 lost, four were in the Western Approches, three in the Channel, and two in the North Sea, of which one was off the Netherlands and the other off Kristiansted, Norway…which is about as close as any of them get to the Baltic exits, which raises the question of whether the RN’s ASW campaign could take much advantage of the Baltic exits as a choke point…and as far as the German North Sea and Baltic ports go, did the Kiel Canal freeze over? No KM icebreakers?

As far as these points:

“…the distance from Brest to the east coast of the United States rivaled that of Tokyo-Honolulu and yet Doenitz was able to mount an effective U-Boat campaign off the U.S…”

Yes, and worth considering as to why that is true are the issues of the total number of KM submarines available in the first quarter of 1942 vis-a-vis the number of IJN boats, and the overall strategic priorities of each Axis power; the amount of shipping running north-south along the eastern seaboard of North American vis a vis the much more limited amount of shipping moving in and out of Oahu; the relative ratio of escorts and air cover vis a vis those escorted, and etc.

I’d also suggest that describing PAUKENSCHLAG and NEULAND as “effective” only works if one subscribes to Doenitz’ concept of tonnage war and sees an empty freighter sunk off Hatteras as significant as a loaded one sunk off Liverpool or Murmansk. Others – including those fighting the ground and air war(s) in the ETO, and responsible for the movements of US and Allied troops in the first three quarters of 1942 that allowed the Allies to sucessfully take the offensive against the Axis in the ETO and Pacific in the third and fourth quarters – might disagree. So might the Axis commanders in North Africa and both the Southwest and South Pacific…

On this point:

“… They mounted an effort against military targets, not mercantile ones. Small wonder that the result was bad.”

If I recall correctly, the ONLY ships sunk by IJN submarines deployed to Hawaiian and North American waters in the winter of 1941-42 were merchantmen, so apparently they weren’t THAT wedded to “warships only”…of course, Saratoga’s torpedoing in December kept her out of service until early June, which reduced the USN fast carriers potentially available for Coral Sea by 33 percent and for Midway by 25 percent; having CV-3 around for either of those would have made several very bad days for the IJN even worse…

And this point:

“…And yet strangely they managed to homeport the Combined Fleet in Indonesia in the later years of the war, to be close to the oil supply, which was being cut off in the Home Islands by–surprise–the American submarine campaign. And the United States managed to establish forward submarine bases as they advanced up the island chains towards Japan.”

Sure, and the differential in the Australian ports vs those of the Japanese-occupied NEI (much less in Micronesia), much less the American production, manpower, and shipping capabilities that allowed the US to build up advanced submarine bases in Brisbane, Fremantle, Exmouth Gulf, Oahu, Guam, etc in 1942-44 can be compared to the capabilities of the Japanese in 1941-42 as a ratio of roughly, what, 10-1? 20-1? More?

If the conclusion is that the Japanese should not have gone to war with the US (and the UK, simultaneously), that hardly seems open to disagreement…but if the suggestion is that the IJN’s actual OOB included the resources to do significantly more damage than what they accomplished historically, I think that overlooks the very real limits on their force structure and logistics system…

As it was, the IJN submarine force’s strategy and tactics in 1941-42 cost the Allies, directly or in part, the services of three of the seven fleet carriers the USN had in service on 12/7/41, either permanently or for most of 1942…which seems like a pretty respectable result for a force that began the war with – maybe – 45 first-class boats…

I value a good contrarian effort as much as anybody, but I just don’t understand the argument that targeting merchant/cargo ships wouldn’t have allowed “significantly more damage” to Allied war effort.

We fought on a shoestring in the Pacific as it was; what would we have been able to do with the Japanese knocking out, oh, 25% to 33% of our shipping?

Sure, they had us on the ropes briefly until the Essex carriers began service … but they were never going to hamper us by sinking capital ships. Bottom line, the Japanese thought that sinking unarmed cargo ships was for pussies. No more stupid than some of our notions, but when you’re down by as much as the Japanese were, equal stupidity means you lose.

i saw a reference to that some years ago when i was reading about post-war japan’s reaction to its loss. it struck me as painfully poignant. (i’ve never actually seen the books, much less owned them. you up for a book-report, dresner?).

losing does weird things to the psyches of the defeated (as winning does weird things to the psyches of the victorious, but different weird things). we get enough civil war denialists/south will rise agin-ers around here that you can still see it in our own damaged american psyche.

Heck, the Germans managed a effective submarine campaign in the Indian Ocean in 1942-43, sinking over 500,000 tons of shipping. Possibly the Japanese should have just outsourced their submarine campaign to the Germans.

but if the suggestion is that the IJN’s actual OOB included the resources to do significantly more damage than what they accomplished historically, I think that overlooks the very real limits on their force structure and logistics system…

Orders of Battle are not magically imposed upon a military. The Japanese started the war in 1941 without about the same number of submarines as the Germans did in 1939. They made decisions about where to allocate their resources and relatively few of them were to submarines. They made decisions about what to aim those submarines at, and they were almost entirely at warships rather than merchant shipping. Given the German example, and the extended shipping lines on which the Allies relied, that was a critical mistake.

space battleship yamato

I remember watching the Americanized version of that (“Starblazers”) as a kid. Great show. Completely implausible, but excellent.

“…what would we (the Allies) have been able to do with the Japanese knocking out, oh, 25% to 33% of our shipping?”

But the question is, COULD the historical IJN submarine force have done that in 1941-42? In other words, would a change in tactics have garnered any significantly different results for the Japanese war effort?

Given the relative lack of impact when the IJN did (at least for them) try a sustained commerce raiding campaign (the Hawaiian-California operations in 1941-42 and the Australian operations in 1942-43), I suspect the answer is no.

I’d also suggest reconsidering the “shoestring” metaphor; throughout the end of 1942 (and well into 1943, in fact) there were more US troops in the Pacific theater than in the ETO; manpower and cargo to the Pacific predominated until the third quarter of 1942, and the manpower flow to the Pacific continued to lead throughout the end of 1942.

As an example, by April, 1943, there were 508,000 soldiers overseas and serving in the EAME, and 525,000 soldiers overseas and in theaters against Japan (including the CBI). In terms of combat divisions (Army and USMC), by the end of 1942 there were eight in the ETO (including North Africa; theses were the 1st and 2nd armored and 1st, 3rd, 5th, 9th, 29th, 34th infantry) and 11 in the Pacific (1st and 2nd Marine and 24th, 25th, 27th, 32nd, 37th, 40th, 41st, 43rd, and Americal). The air groups (AAF only; all operational Marine Aviation – IIRC, roughly four groups in this period – was in the Pacific) split 34 in EAME and 19 in the Central, South, and Southwestern Pacific, plus 4 in the CBI. Above are from Leighton and Coakley and Matloff and Snell.

So if the Pacific war was on a shoestring in 1942, so was everyone else…

The IJN mounted what were – for them – extended anti-shipping campaigns (multiple boats deployed roughly simultaneously in the same region and targetting merchant shipping) in the waters between Hawaii and California in the winter of 1941-42 and off eastern Australia in 1942-43; the results were (roughly) the loss of a dozen Allied merchantmentmen in the eastern Pacific 1941-42 and about the same off Australia (one of which was a hospital ship, HMAS Centaur; on balance, probably not a good thing for the Japanese war effort); these actions ocurred at the same times when A) the USN was covering significant troop convoys from the US and Panama to Hawaii, Samoa., and points west; and B) the US and allies were on the offensive in the Southwest, South, and Central Pacific theaters…

During roughly the same period, the IJN’s attacks on warships cost the USN – as I said above – three of the seven fast carriers in commission in 1941 for all or most of 1942…

The German offensive in the IO was focused on South African waters and the Madagascar Channel, IIRC; not exactly the equivalent of the Western and Hawaiian sea frontiers in terms of resources, much less the RAN and RAAF in home waters, in the same period…and although 500,000 tons of lost Allied shipping is significant; it is roughly equal to what, seven Liberty ships, at 7,000 tons apiece?

And how many days at sea did that loss require from the KM submarine force, days that could have – one expects – been doubled or tripled in the Western Approaches and Norwegian Sea…which were the maritime theaters that mattered to the Allied counter-offensive against Nazi Germany.

These damaged areas are referred to as the Miasmas and it is believed that they have been caused due to some stressful factor and have been further augmented due to prolonged stress. One of the practices advised in order to be able to cure the depression is to spend significant amounts of time in the sun.

Still, given that US yards built more than more than 2,700 Liberties and more than 530 Victories during the war (not even counting the C1s, C2s, C3s, C4s, T1s, T2s, etc.), the point holds – the Allies could build new ships far faster than the Axis could sink them.

As a single example, Calship’s Terminal Island yard was built as an essentially greenfield facility with eight slipways; six more were added during the war, and the yard’s total production was 306 EC2-S-C1 Liberty ships as freighters; 30 Z-ET1-S-C3 Liberty ships as tankers; 32 VC2-S-AP3 Victory ships as freighters; and 30 VC2-S-AP5 Haskell-class troop transports for the U.S. Navy – that’s the output of a single yard, and not even one of the largest.

I’d change your final statement to “…The Japanese (and the Germans, for that matter) – in comparison to the Americans –bungled the war badly, both in terms of execution and commitment.”

The question is, however, if whether a change in tactics in 1941-42 by the IJN submarine force commanders would have achieved any significant “improvement” in their overall position; given the numerical and logistical limitations the Japanese were stuck with in 1941-42, any advocate for a change in strategy within the IJN would have had to make a very compelling case – and again, given the sucesses the 6th Fleet scored against the US fast carrier force in 1941-42 historically, one wonders if that case could be made, then or now.

the point holds – the Allies could build new ships far faster than the Axis could sink them.

That’s essentially irrelevant to the discussion. That the Americans could outbuild the Japanese or Germans doesn’t mean that the Japanese or Germans shouldn’t try a particular strategy, any more than that the Germans could build better tanks should mean that the Americans give up on armored warfare.

I’d change your final statement to “…The Japanese (and the Germans, for that matter) – in comparison to the Americans –bungled the war badly, both in terms of execution and commitment.”

Except that the Germans _didn’t_ bungle their approach to submarine warfare and the comparison to the Americans is already explicit in the last paragraph. I think I’ll stick by what I originally wrote.

Your focus on 1941-42 is much too narrow. Japan’s position, strategy, and doctrine was set much earlier than that; and their errors with regard to the submarine force started earlier as well.

Minor note re Liberty ships: According to Wikipedia, the Liberty ships were rated at just over 14,000 tons; so “500,000 tons” of sunk shipping would be 35 vessels, not seventy (assuming, of course that all the ships lost to the Germans in the IO were “Liberty” types, which is obviously incorrect – most were probably smaller). Still, not a bad score for subs operating at extreme distances.

Note that Gross Registered Tonnage (GRT) is different from Deadweight Tonnage (DWT) is different from whatever metric is being used to yield that “14,000 ton” displacement. Since we’re keeping score here –and using an irrelevant metric, when the key question is cargo value landed– we need to make sure that we’re using the same scoring system consistently, which is why the 7000 GRT figure (IIRC) is used for Liberty ships.

Is the point that the Allies could build new ships far faster than the Axis could sink them really irrelevant to the discussion?

I thought one of the conclusions in the original post was that the IJN submarine force’s focus on warships, as opposed to merchantmen, was poor strategy…but if the Japanese understood (for example, based on the German failure in WW I) that a commerce war against the US and UK was doomed to failure because of competent ASW and those nations’ massive edge in mobilization and production, then the IJN’s prioritizing (on warships) was correct, true?

Actually, I’d argue the Germans did bungle their approach to the war, from tactics up to and including grand strategy, repeatedly; the KM’s focus on a tonnage war (as opposed to trying to interdict troop and supply movement into places wehre it mattered – like the UK) was simply one of many, many examples. (Going to war against the two greatest sea powers on the planet simulataneously probably wasn’t the best decision, was it?)

This statement” “…Your focus on 1941-42 is much too narrow. Japan’s position, strategy, and doctrine was set much earlier than that; and their errors with regard to the submarine force started earlier as well.” is interesting; given that Japan is an archipelago, I don’t believe any IJN officer EVER could have argued for a sea denial strategy, as opposed to a sea control strategy…the Japanese had to (attempt) to control the sea; simply seeking to deny it to an enemy (as the Germans sought to do so against the British) is only possble for a continental power (and even then, it didn’t work, in either world war…)

When would you suggest the IJN should have decided to focus on a commerce warfare strategy against the US and UK, and what impact would that have had on their historical OOB – what would have had to be traded away for more submarines? Likewise, was a commerce warfare strategy even possible for Japan, given its geography (and that of the empire?)

Erik – very true, which is why the German focus on tonnage warfare was wrong-headed; in 1942, a ship carrying sugar in the Caribbean or returning with scrap from Egypt via Durban was not the same as one carrying aviation gasoline to England (much less the lead elements of 8th Air Force)